"Hillary believes that she can
win this game in 2016 because this time she’s got us, the black
vote, in her back pocket — her lucky card," she wrote in her
article, "Why Hillary Clinton doesn't deserve the black
vote."

That "lucky card dates back to Clinton's husband and former
president Bill Clinton's time in office, when he was once dubbed
the nation’s “first black president” prior to President Barack
Obama's election in 2008.

Alexander said that "love affair" between black
Americans and the Clintons seems strange when considering the
former president's extreme stance on crime that ultimately hurt
many African-Americans. Moreover, Alexander notes, his economic
policies didn't help blacks, either.

The former Secretary of State can't get a free pass just because
those were the policies of her husband, according to Alexander,
who noted that Hillary wasn't "picking out china while she was
first lady."

Alexander wrote:

She bravely broke the mold and redefined that job in ways
no woman ever had before. She not only campaigned for Bill; she
also wielded power and significant influence once he was
elected, lobbying for legislation and other measures. That
record, and her statements from that era, should be
scrutinized. In her support for the 1994 crime bill, for
example, she used racially coded rhetoric to cast black
children as animals. “They are not just gangs of kids anymore,”
she said. “They are often the kinds of kids that are called
‘super-predators.’ No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about
why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to
heel.”

Bill's 1994
crime bill, which Sanders voted in favor of as a
then-congressman, "created dozens of new federal capital crimes,
mandated life sentences for some three-time offenders, and
authorized more than $16 billion for state prison grants and the
expansion of police forces," she wrote, noting that
Bill Clinton contributed to mass incarceration more than any
other president.

Alexander did add, however, that Bill's stance on crime was
supported by many black Americans, but that they wanted more than
toughness. They wanted investment in their schools, job programs,
and more access to healthcare, she said.

Even as the US economy was experiencing a boom during the Clinton
presidency, she said black Americans did not experience the same
level of success. Alexander said that the increased rate of
incarceration for black men coincided with a "soaring" rate
of joblessness. In addition, Bill's
effort to reform welfare ended up hitting black communities
hardest, she argued.

Hillary
Clinton.REUTERS/Adrees
Latif

Alexander is not the only scholar to doubt Hillary's credentials
with black voters.

During the 2008 campaign, when Hillary deployed Bill to South
Carolina in hopes of delivering the black vote, Melissa
Harris-Perry, a former African-American studies professor at
Princeton,
wrote a similar piece in Slate, asking "Why do so many people
think the Clinton years were good times for black America?"

She wrote that her research showed that many black Americans
believed that, by the time Bill left office, that they were
doing better economically than white Americans. Data showed
that, while just 5% of black Americans believed they were
better off than whites economically during the 1980s, that
number jumped to 30% by the end of the 20th century.

"This belief is simply wrong," she said.

"The hypnotic racial dance of cultural authenticity that Bill
Clinton performed in office lulled many blacks into perceptual
fog," she continued. "As Clinton performed blackness, real
black people got poorer."